Northcoast Jazz Collective plays Sunday morning show

By John ChaconaContributing writer

May 2, 2013 12:01 AM

By John ChaconaContributing writer

May 2, 2013 12:01 AM

HEAR IT

Northcoast Jazz Collective will perform Sunday at 10 a.m. for a Jazz-Erie Jazz Brunch at the Hemingway Room of the Ambassador Center, 7794 Peach St. Tickets are $35 and include a buffet-style breakfast. They're available at Romolo Chocolates and 602-1391. For more on Northcoast Jazz Collective, visit www.northcoastjazzcollective.com.

The years after the World War II were a golden age of great jazz players from the Midwest. Chicago had always been a great jazz town, but players from Detroit, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh also filled top-flight bands.

Cleveland also got into the act, boosting trumpeters Benny Bailey and Bill Hardman and the guitarist Jim Hall to prominence. At 75, bassist John Gallo -- whose Northcoast Jazz Collective will play a jazz brunch on Sunday -- is a little young to have been part of that era. Still, he's steeped in Cleveland music so I asked him to describe the "Cleveland sound."

"I'm not sure what it is now, but it used to be polkas," he said with a hearty laugh.

Gallo left Cleveland for New York in the early '60s "to hit the big time, but I didn't like it," he said. "I could read, so I did a lot of Broadway musicals recording sessions, and I didn't want that, so I left music in '65 and didn't return until 2000."

He also played in a band with a young Chick Corea ("We both quit the band on the same day and had to take a bus back to New York") and worked with a wild tenor saxophonist from Arkansas named Farrell Sanders, who would achieve fame a few years later with John Coltrane when he called himself Pharoah.

From that experience, Gallo brings an adventurous harmonic sensibility and a distinctive compositional voice to the Collective, even though he is the group's senior member.

"It was a good learning experience," he said of his time with the budding avant-garde. "Mark and Dan didn't have that."

Mark and Dan are drummer Mark Grey and pianist Dan Maier who, with saxophonist Dave Frank, make up the group. The four players have managed to keep the band together for almost 10 years.

"For a time, you could make it as a jazz musician in Cleveland, [but] when the recession started, the number of gigs really dipped. I thought that when the economy rebounded, the gigs would come back," Grey said.

"I think 2013 could be the year. The Erie gig is one of about eight times that the band will be playing in May. I feel that if jazz is coming back, then we'll be OK."